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Work at a hotdog stand, they say. It’ll be great, they say.
You’ll have the absolute time of your life flipping around sausages and frying (not burning) onions and then making sure that you haven’t ran out of mustard or ketchup again because that’s happened way too many times already and it’s getting pretty embarrassing, embarrassing to the point that you desperately want to bury your head in the sand and stop existing completely because everything is going wrong and—
The pay is decent and the free food is always a bonus. The customers aren’t necessarily terrible, until you get to the stereotypical 50 year old woman who just demands that you switch up the entire recipe specifically for their lactose intolerant, sausage-allergic, hypoglycemic eleven year old with glasses and spotty cheeks. But other than that, it’s relatively fine.
So, what more could you possibly want out of it? An actual life? Hah. As if.
Well, Tommy wants a lot of other things, actually. He wants to add something like BBQ sauce to the register instead of their typical, plain other ones; he wants to be able to make drinks of all different flavours and varieties and not just give out shitty cans; he wants to start making anything but hotdogs, because Christ he’s been doing this for a while now and it’s seriously getting old.
Of course, that would definitely, absolutely defeat the point of working at a ‘hotdog stand’ with the glaringly obvious hint being in the title, but still. Tommy’s been doing this stupid job for, what, about 60 years now? Give or take? He forgets, if he’s honest, but it’s certainly been a while - he’s pretty sure that he has hotdogs painfully ingrained into his fuckin’ brain at this point.
Seriously, though, if Tommy had even the slightest chance at being able to switch to something like burgers instead, he’d do it. He’d do it in less than a heartbeat. He’d do it so quickly that you’d think he was the flash, or some other weirdly fast superhero. Or whatever. He doesn’t know, he hasn’t even finished watching the Avengers. His point still stands anyway.
(And sure, maybe, in the very back of his fragile, distracted mind, is the constant reminder that this stand - that this job he’s placed himself within and built from the barren ground up - is actually a homage to an old friend, an old partner and an old bastard, but Tommy— well, he’s always been pretty good at denial. He’ll just continue ignoring anything that he doesn’t particularly like.)
Speaking of ignoring things he doesn’t like, Tommy is just now realising that there’s somebody standing in front of him. Not standing in front of him in a weird way, in a ’I’ve just broken into your house and am now standing at the foot of your bed and watching you sleep’ kind of way, but in a way that’s screaming ’I’m trying to buy a fucking hotdog what the hell are you doing wake up you stupid little—’ kind of way.
Tommy shoots upwards and rather far away from his wandering, very wandering, thoughts. He shakes himself for a moment, pulls on his classic and blinding ‘customer smile’ and throws his hands about in a placating manner - soothe the customer before they can get mad. “I’m so, so sorry! I got distracted there for a moment—” he attempts.
“Well, it was a bit more than just a moment,” the customer interrupts quickly, sounding snooty and uptight all at once. What a prick. What a right prick. “I’d called for you a good few times.”
Tommy rubs at the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry, sorry, you know how it is— running a hotdog stand and all that. Ha. Ha.” He definitely sounds like he’s losing his mind. He might actually just be losing his mind.
“I don’t know how it is, seeing as I don’t run a hotdog stand. But sure,” the other - a brunette with wild curls and round glasses and brown eyes and huh he kind of looks familiar in a way that makes Tommy want to kick his foot into scalding hotdog water - says. “Can I order now? Or are you going to flail around for a bit longer?”
“I wasn’t flailing—” he hisses underneath his breath, before nodding. “Of course, sir, what would you like? A plain hotdog? A hotdog with onions? A hotdog with cheese? A hotdog with rhubarb?”
“Rhubarb?”
“It’s a family tradition, a recipe passed down through the ages,” Tommy says, like the liar he is. He just likes making weird shit sometimes. “Would you like to try it?”
“Absolutely not,” the stranger denies— actually, Tommy is going to call him Dickson from now on. He looks like a Dickson. Dick. Ha. Get it? “Two hotdogs with onions. To go.”
“Considering we don’t have a seating area anywhere around here, every hotdog has to be ‘to go’,” Tommy replies with a snort as he adds up the total amount, just because he hates himself apparently and pissing customers off is, y’know, the normal thing to do. Obviously. “£3.50 please.”
Dick hands over the money after pulling it out of his leather wallet. He still looks vaguely displeased and irritated. Or maybe that’s just his resting facial features because Tommy’s pretty sure that he’s looked like that ever since he’d forcefully woken the blonde up out of his wandering daze a few moments ago. Are people just like that, these days? Arseholes? Probably.
Tommy has met quite a few arseholes in his life, though. Quite a few horrible people with their massive heads shoved so far up their arses that it’s not even funny anymore because genuinely what the hell, how can you be that controlling and conceited and horrible to fucking everyone in—
No. No. Don’t think about that.
Tommy doesn’t let those notions take him too far away from reality as he forces himself to focus on the task at hand - making the hotdogs. Well, putting the hotdogs together, at least. The sausages are already cooked and the onions look pretty well done and he’s almost 100% certain that the sauce bottles are still relatively full so all that’s left is assembling it. Like a little builder. A little man with a hammer and a brick.
He likes building. Or, he might’ve at one point when it was a little easier. Now he doesn’t have the time for it, or the resources, or the patience. Shitty shacks are good enough for him - hollow mounds in hills even more so.
“How many onions do you want on these?” He calls out, even as he’s facing away from the waiting customer. He knows that the brunette is still there. Tommy is very good at listening to footsteps, after all, and he’s heard nothing at all recently so that means the guy must be there still and—
“Lots on both of them, please!” Is what a bubbly, warm voice speaks up with in response and— woah, hold on a minute, because that’s definitely not Dickson because seriously that guy did not look like he even remotely had the capacity to sound anything other than downright depressed and angry. So, who and why and what is— “Lots and lots!”
Tommy spins around, hotdog bun in hand and looking more confused than anything else. “You’re not Dickson.” He blurts in accusation before he can stop himself. Idiot. Fucking idiot.
This guy, this guy with long locks of pink hair and pale skin and an outfit consisting of something that definitely came out of a medieval book about sad, probably misogynistic poets, is not what Tommy had been expecting at all. The man in question raises a brow, and that’s pink too, of course it is. “Dickson?”
“My name is not Dickson,” Dickson replies haughtily, and Tommy looks over to him now.
Tommy blinks. “I’m very confused.”
The one with pink hair laughs. And then continues to laugh. And then he laughs some more because apparently this is the only decent humour he’s heard in years. Or maybe he’s just nuts. “I’m Teddy!” He clarifies, and then gestures over to glaring, angry, horrible Dickson. “And that’s William.”
Tommy pauses, does his best not to squeeze the shit out of the hotdog bun he’s still clinging onto and then nods. “Uhm— William like Will?”
“No,” William clarifies (Tommy thinks that ‘Dick’ is better fitting), “I don’t like being called ‘Will’.”
“Yeah,” Teddy hums, “He really dislikes it, actually. I get it though, ‘Will’ is a bit— y’know,” he waves his hands with a bright smile. “Odd.”
It’s not, Tommy thinks feverishly. It’s not odd, why would you say that? Why would you even insinuate that? Why— “Right, you’re right,” he laughs, spinning back around so he can quickly get finished with the first hotdog. “I’m Tommy,” he says, as he places his beautiful masterpiece down on the side. “The sauces are over there. If they’re not full, just let me know.”
“Thank you!” Teddy beams, as he slides the hotdog over to William, who takes a step away and begins to put mustard on. Yum. (Tommy fucking hates mustard.) “You have a nametag, by the way, Tommy,” he points out amiably, “But it’s nice to meet you anyway.”
Oh. Oh yeah. He forgot. Tommy laughs a little sheepishly as he places a sausage onto the next bun. “Right, right, my bad,” he shakes his head and makes an aim to steer the conversation away from his growing embarrassment, “Uhm— what’re you guys doing out here? Just doing a bit of exploring?” He questions. Polite curiosity gets you far, he’s come to learn over the years.
“Hmm,” Teddy taps his fingers along the metal side sticking out of the stand, pink hair shifting slightly in the wind. It’s flowy. “Yeah. We’re with our dad, actually, I don’t know where he’s gone, but—”
“You guys are brothers?” Tommy butts in with wide eyes.
Teddy laughs. “Unfortunately. Twins, actually. We don’t look that much like it though, do we?”
“Yeah, not really actually.” Tommy admits, “Sorry for just—”
“No, no, it’s fine,” the man immediately dismisses with a flippant wave. “But yeah, we thought we’d have a day trip up here to explore the place, do some touristy things for once and see what everything is like.”
“Here?”
“Yeah! It’s interesting, don’t you think?” Teddy grins. “The old city of L’Manburg.”
Tommy looks around for a moment with what vision he has, and— oh yeah. It is the old city of L’Manburg, isn’t it? Or at least the ruins of the damn place - the broken foundations and the mossy cobblestone and the heavy, aching memories that threaten to choke, choke, choke him without even a lick of kind remorse.
It’s grand and it’s open and Tommy works there. At a hotdog stand. By himself.
He shrugs. “It’s a bit of a shitthole, honestly.”
Teddy bursts out into bright peels of infectious laughter. Tommy’s sure that even William had snorted. “You think?” Teddy arches a brow.
“Yup,” Tommy says, popping his ‘p’ as he turns back around to hand over the last hotdog - made to perfection, as always. Teddy takes it with a thankful nod. “It’s old. It smells. It’s creepy as fuck at night.”
“I can see the creepy part, honestly.” Teddy agrees, “Bit of a ghost town out here, huh?”
“Unfortunately so,” Tommy nods. “I’ve been here for years now and nothing changes.”
“Years?” Teddy questions, tilting his head to the side. “You look quite young. Did you grow up around here or something?”
What? That— Oh. Oh, right. Of course. Tommy was seventeen, wasn’t he? He was a teenager with a kind smile and a youthful expression and a voice that was still a little too high for his liking. Damn you puberty. “Yeah, I— ah, we had— have a family business! A family hotdog business. With this cart thing. And job. I grew up helping my… dad… with the… sauce?”
Well. That definitely sounds more like a question than an answer, doesn’t it? Goddamnit. Fuck Tommy and fuck his life. This is awful. He can’t even offer up one coherent response that isn’t even more confused than the last. Good job to him. Absolute idiot. Absolute degenerate with no sensible filter whatsoever.
He meets two people that look weirdly like a bunch of pricks he’d known a ‘couple’ of years back, if their personalities had been atrociously swapped, and suddenly his brain turns to mush. Complete mush. Soggy, wet mush that’s then been lobbed at a brick wall just for the fun of it.
“The sauce,” Teddy snorts, and there’s a twinkle within his eyes that practically screams ’yeah, you’re talking out of your arse but that’s okay because I’ll accept it.’ “Do you not get bored? Or do you like— explore sometimes? Find out the dark, mysterious secrets of our history?”
Tommy rolls his eyes, even if that’s probably not the best etiquette. He just needs to relax. “I get bored all of the time, especially when business isn’t exactly ‘booming’. But uh, no, I don’t really need to explore to be honest. I’ve seen a lot of it already.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Teddy hums. “Were your family— sorry if this is intrusive—”
“It’s definitely going to be intrusive,” William butts in before taking a bite of his hotdog.
Teddy puts his middle finger up, and then focuses back in on Tommy. “Ignore him. Anyways, were your family descendants of L’Manburg? L’Manburgians? Or did you just happen to set up shop here?”
Tommy pauses for a moment, and is only just able to push away the sly smile from spreading across his face. It’s pretty ironic, isn’t it? Being asked if he is a descendant of those who lived in L’Manburg when it still stood, if he was even slightly connected to it through thin strings, when in reality, he was a founder. A founding father. An original.
Tommy’s seen pictures of himself in the leaflets that are given out around the ruins from the little tourist shops, or at least, they’re recreations of what people believe he might’ve looked like once upon a time. (They’re always pretty shit.)
”Tommy, last name unknown, was a child soldier during the early days of L’Manburg, often found following along with ex-president Wilbur Soot and his crazed ideas.” Is what they often say as Tommy reads over it in his spare time, just when he’s really bored. ”His dedication to the country and its people goes unmatched, and he’s often depicted to be courageous and brave - eventually dying for his beliefs.”
Ha. As if he’d die for any of his beliefs. Church Prime would never kill him off, and by the end of it, there was no way he was going to die for L’Manburg all over again, so. They get some things right, and then most of it horrible, offensively wrong. Maybe Tommy should start offering to write up what he can remember, (everything) so it’s at least a bit more accurate.
Oh, what he’d do to see Technoblade’s face when he realises that people had tried to originally write him down as a peacemaker and a bridge between the differing causes. Now that had been quickly erased when Karl Jacob’s hastily written books about ‘Doomsday’ had been discovered within the overgrown remains of Kinoko Kingdom.
Tommy smiles at Teddy, leans forward just a bit. “Nah. I’m just a normal guy, unfortunately enough.”
Teddy immediately waves a hand. “Don’t say that! Nothing wrong with being a normal guy, right, William? I’m a normal guy.”
“You have bright pink hair and are obnoxiously loud all of the time. You are not a ‘normal guy.’” William immediately responds with, though his tone is a drawl. Tommy is beginning to like him. Maybe. Just a little bit.
“He’s got you there, man,” Tommy grins.
Teddy sticks his tongue out, gesturing between the two others. “You guys are ganging up on me. I don’t appreciate this, I hope you know.”
“It’s not undeserved.” William shrugs.
“I’m going to tell dad that you’re harassing me.”
“Dad will laugh.”
“Dad is going to suckerpunch you into next week.”
“Dad has arthritis and a bad back. Don’t be an idiot.”
The bickering continues on and on and Tommy can only watch with a sickeningly fond smile. He hates it, hates that these people look familiar and sound familiar and makes his stomach twistingly nauseous - that feeling only increasing with each moment that passes by.
It reminds him of a time where they were all together, before— before the more intense wars, before the murder and the anarchy and the feel of gloved hands closing in around his throat, pulling him away from a tired president’s apologetic eyes and a retired fighter’s familiar warmth, away from a neglected grave and a home that had been his, once upon a time.
Tommy hates it and he loves it and— huh, is that some old guy doing a shitty rendition of the YMCA dance by himself? Or is he waving at somebody? It’s probably more likely that it’s the latter, right? Right? (He sort of wishes it was the former, though.)
The blonde turns his gaze to the bickering set of twins. “Hey— Hey!” He says quite loudly until the two are looking at him. “Speaking about dads, is that yours, over there? Blonde guy, looks kind of crazy, wearing some comedic shirt about fridges?”
Teddy glances over, and so does William. Teddy laughs and it’s bright and loud. “Oh shit, you’re right! I forgot that we were meant to be quick here. Sorry about that one.”
Tommy shrugs. He doesn’t really care that much. “All good. I hope you guys have a great time looking around, and thanks for buying a hotdog.”
“S’alright, man. Thank you for the food and putting up with us,” Teddy smiles, gesturing for his twin to come with him. He pauses though, as William walks diligently forward. “Hey— sorry again, but do you have any recommendations for where we should go and take a look around? If not, it’s completely fine.”
Tommy pauses, tilts his head to the side, blonde and white hair flopping as he goes. “Recommendations?”
“Yeah. Like— cool places to see. We’ve seen the crater, L’Manhole, and uhm a bit of the old towns, but…”
Tommy’s lips pull into a grin. Sure, he could say somewhere serious, somewhere like the old Snowchester mansion or the underground ravine that made up Pogtopia, but… “Tommy’s house. Not mine, the uhm— the teenager from L’Manburg. It’s the area along the prime path, just a bit before the old hotels. It’s loads of fun up there.”
“I thought that was just an old shack built into the side of a hill.” Teddy arches a brow.
“Yep.” Tommy nods. “It is.”
Teddy’s expression morphs into a thoroughly confused frown, for just a moment, before he steps away with a laugh. “Sure, man. Thanks for the recommendation! I’ll see you around!”
Tommy watches him go, watches him run across more modern paths to catch up with his twin and father. He watches him go and knows, deep down, that he’s never going to see any of them again, no matter how much he craves that foreign sense of normality. They were there one moment, and are easily gone the next.
The rest of the day slugs on, at an incredibly slow pace. Those people, that boisterous family with the twins and the weird dad, had shown up at his little stand pretty early on in the morning around eleven or so, and had proved to be the only real entertainment that Tommy had had in hours. He didn’t miss them, though, not really.
Most days were like this, honestly - of course there were a few tourists who wanted something to eat or drink to keep them going, a few people looking for directions or sometimes just general conversation, because for some reason they all keep on assuming that Tommy is going to know everything about everywhere (even if he pretty much does, but that’s besides the point) and ask him many, many different questions.
He was like some shining beacon dressed in blue sweaters and red aprons that apparently screamed ’Me, a hotdog vendor, definitely knows about why the history books say that Wilbur Soot fucked a fish and then had a ginger son! Come and bother me!’
So yeah, not exactly the most liveliest of jobs - not compared to some of the other things that Tommy has done in his life, at least. But it was familiar and it was easy and Tommy knew how to turn over his sausages and make sure that the onions weren’t totally burnt, so he didn’t mind that much. He got to do something and he got to do it well.
It was nearly time for him to start packing up, anyway.
The sky is darkening considerably, cloudy and miserable and - okay, well, not that much but it’s definitely not bright anymore. The air is getting a little colder and the people coming to his stand have been few and far between. There aren’t that many tourists around this time of the year anyway (most wait for Summer or Spring), but this is definitely not a large enough amount that Tommy should bother staying open when he could be quite literally anywhere else.
All he needs to do now is pack everything away and then cart his stand over to one of the locked ‘garage’ areas that had been built not too long ago. (Tommy had wanted to protest, at first, because they were genuinely fucking hideous, but then he’d thought back to the monstrosities that had once been built in L’Manburg and kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t always be a hypocrite, unfortunately enough.)
Tommy straightens up from where he’d been pathetically flopping over the front counter - if you could even call it that - and runs a hand through his hair. His gloves are off, thankfully, so he’s not just completely smeared hotdog grease and condiments all against his perfect locks. Oh, if he had—
He shakes his head a little with a mutter, deciding to not even bother entertaining those downright horrific thoughts as he focuses on packing up what he needs to - closing the lids, securing the different compartments, hanging his apron back up on the side because lord knows that he can’t be arsed washing it just yet. Maybe tomorrow. Probably tomorrow.
This is probably the worst part about running his little hotdog business, Tommy thinks. Having to put everything away at the end of the day is just… tiring. It’s boring and fiddly and takes a lot of focus so that he doesn’t trap his fingers in anything again, something that’s happened way too many times for it to even remotely be alright.
You have to pack up all of the food, make sure that everything is folded up in the right place, manage to somehow tie it all together at the side so nothing falls apart while it’s in storage and—
Tommy is just pulling away from his sweet, darling baby, lines of sweat beading along his fuzzy hairline and he’s letting out a satisfied, huffing breath when a voice speaks up behind him. Right behind him.
“Hello?”
He spins around immediately, heart lurching up within his throat and his eyes widening considerably at the sight of this— this guy, this guy with blonde hair and green eyes and sandy freckles dotted over his cheeks; this guy with a grey jumper and black joggers and looking quite out of place for what is usually a day trip out for most people.
Tommy yelps. The guy yelps too, and then waves his hands around. “Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you!” His voice is rough and kind and strangely familiar in a way that has Tommy confused because he’s almost one hundred percent certain that he doesn’t recognise him.
“You didn’t startle me,” is what Tommy immediately defends himself with, and then shakes his head. “I—”
“It certainly looked like you were startled,” the guy laughs. “You yelped pretty loudly.”
“So did you!” Tommy points out irritatedly.
He shrugs, a little sheepish as he rubs at the back of his neck but still sure of himself. “Yeah, well, I’m not the one denying all of that.”
Tommy scowls. He scowls a lot, and then crosses his arms over a chest with a huff. He knows that he has to be nice, though, for business, or something like that. “Whatever. Did— I’m just packing up, if you were looking for a hotdog. Sorry.” He’s not sorry at all.
The guy shakes his head. “I wasn’t actually, man, don’t worry. I just came over because I haven’t seen anyone else in a while. It was getting pretty lonely.”
Tommy’s brows pull into a frown, even as his scepticism and immediate protectiveness over himself seems to drip away. “Oh. You’re— oh. You’re here looking around this place, then?”
“Yup, got here about… twenty minutes ago?”
“But it’s getting late. You’re not gonna be able to see much soon.” Tommy raises a brow. Of course, people have set up lamps and lights along the pathways, but it’s not exactly the same. It’s different. It’s just— it’s easier to look at everything when it’s brighter, that’s all and that’s it.
“I know, I know,” the guy sighs, running a hand through his dirty blonde hair. “I didn’t want to see everything anyway, just like the— the cooler stuff.”
“The cooler stuff?”
“Like L’Manhole, and Tommy’s house and the prison, y’know, the essentials.”
Tommy blinks. He stares. And then he grins because this dude wants to see his house, but then he also quickly mellows back into indifference because he really shouldn’t care that much, if at all. “Well— good luck getting to all of that then, I guess. You better hurry before it gets even darker.”
Tommy turns back around then, so that he can focus on making sure the wheels are securely on his stand so that he can start pulling it off to the garages where he can safely leave it overnight, and then come back to it the next morning - ready for another day at his very exciting job of making hotdogs and entertaining annoying people.
Everything seems to be in check, and he straightens out once more to give it just one last glance over. Hmm— yeah, pretty neat and pretty tidy. Not his best work but it’s definitely not going to collapse everywhere on the way back, so that’s always a plus.
What isn’t a plus, is the tapping on his shoulder.
Tommy turns back around, a sigh already leaving his lips. “Dude,” he says, doing his best not to be rude to this stranger, whoever he is. “Do you need something?”
“Maybe?”
“Genuinely what the hell is that supposed to mean.” Right, so ‘not being rude’ has completely gone out of the window, then.
“Okay— look, I know this is probably going to sound really weird but like… you work here, right? The hotdog stand?”
Tommy arches a brow. “You’re observant.”
The guy’s cheeks flush pink out of embarrassment. “Right. But uhm, that means you must know a lot about this place, yeah?”
Tommy can already see where this is going. He can see it and he doesn’t like it. Not one single bit. “I know a decent amount, sure. But I’m not going to—”
“Hear me out! Hear me out, look, I just need a tour guide, just for a few spots. That’s it.”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
“C’mon—”
“You can literally hire tour guides. Ones that will take you wherever you want,” Tommy points out, “And will probably know a lot more than I do.” Now that bit is unlikely, very unlikely, seeing as Tommy is, well, Tommy, but still. This guy doesn’t need to know that.
“But they’re closed for the day, and they don’t do one-person tours anyway.”
“They don’t?”
“No. I tried earlier but it wasn’t working.”
Tommy sighs. And then sighs again. He can say no, he can very much so say no and then go about his day as if it had never happened. He doesn’t need to give in. He doesn’t need to be moral and kind and accepting of anyone and everyone. He doesn’t. But here he is anyway, about to fucking give in. “...How much are you paying?”
“£15.”
Tommy groans. It’s not bad. It’s really, really not bad. Fifteen quid could get him a decent amount of coke bottles. Or he could use it on something like the lottery. Maybe. Not that he probably ever would do that but, y’know, it’s the principle of it. “£15 and you help me lug this over there and I’ll do it.”
“Really?”
“I’ll change my mind if you keep on asking me.” Tommy warns, and for a moment, he feels a lot older than this guy who looks to be in his early twenties - well, he is sort of older but not really but also he is and—
“Great!” The guy grins with a toothy smile. His eyes flash with something, for a moment, something that's darker than the typical emerald caught within them. It makes Tommy’s stomach twist nervously. “I’m Clay, by the way, but my friends call me Dream.”
So, it turns out, that this ‘Dream’ guy isn’t the Dream that Tommy had immediately thought of. He’s not— even with the dirty blonde hair and the fair skin, he’s not the man that had made Tommy’s life a living hell, both at the start and then even now; he’s not the man who had sent Tommy’s brother - biological or not - into a downward spiral; he’s not the man who had caused tyranny and destruction wherever he went.
He’s just a guy, a normal guy with kind friends and nice parents and a childhood nickname that had stemmed from roleplaying about nightmares and sleeping in school once upon a time. Or something like that. That’s fine, that’s okay, Tommy can— Tommy’s just going to call him ‘Clay’. It’s a personal thing, that’s all. Plus, it’s not like they’re friends, so—
”You can call me Dream, if you want. I don’t mind.”
“No thanks.”
Clay is pretty helpful, all in all. He’d been more than happy to help Tommy pull the stand down the path and towards the garages, just as he’d frequently mentioned before. He was patient while Tommy locked up and didn’t seem even remotely bothered by Tommy’s further insistence to get a drink before they headed to their first destination together.
Tommy was still sort of worried that this guy was going to like, try to murder him or something, but— whatever. He was getting a decent conversation out of this so he’d take it, even if he did end up with a knife in his chest at some point. (Not that it would do much, anyway.)
“Where do you want to go first?” He asks, turning a curious gaze towards Clay.
“Well, I was thinking L’Manhole, but…” Clay nibbles on his lower lip, contemplative and thinking, and then shakes his head. “But it’s already kind of late, and I don’t want to fall in or anything, so maybe we could start with Tommy’s house and then head to the prison?”
“You sure?” The hole is covered with glass once again, so there wouldn’t be any falling in, and he’s sure they could get to everything before it got super dark, but honestly Tommy is more than happy to skip out that part of this makeshift, shabby tour anyway.
“Yeah, I don’t wanna waste anymore of your time, too.” Clay grins, patting at Tommy’s shoulder momentarily. (He doesn't flinch. He doesn’t.) “Lead the way then, my good friend.”
“You’re an idiot,” Tommy replies, though there’s a weird tinge of fondness to his tone of voice as he begins to head back down the path. It’s a manmade one— well, okay, pretty much everything is manmade. What he’s trying to say is that it’s a modern one, one that’s been set up to travel against the original prime path to preserve the old trail instead of ruining it any further. They haven’t decided to try and restore it, either, so this is what they’re left with.
It’s nice though, the path is smooth and concrete and littered with lights and signs to guide them on their way. Tommy knows the whole place like the back of his hand anyway, and could probably make his way throughout the ruins blindfolded, but y’know, it’s the thought that counts these days.
He likes the little extra help.
“Soo…” he starts, scuffing his shoe against the ground as he walks. He probably shouldn’t be doing that, but whatever. “What brought you here, anyway?”
Clay hums, cracks his fingers and then shrugs. He’s wearing gloves now. “I dunno. I guess I’ve just been pretty bored lately and thought It’d be good to come and see some nearby history. I learnt a bit about this stuff in school and it was pretty interesting.”
“Really?” Tommy arches a brow. “Interesting? I thought it would be seriously boring. Did it not put you off more than anything?”
“No! Of course not!” Clay waves his hands around frantically, “This place is awesome, and so were the people! President Schlatt, Wilbur, Sapnap and George—”
“President Schlatt was an alcoholic arsehole.”
“I think he was misunderstood.”
“You have serious mental health issues if you think that,” Tommy snorts. “But carry on.”
Clay laughs as if he’s not offended in the slightest. Maybe he isn’t. “As I was saying, they all sounded like tough, inspirational people who did what was best for them and their country. I liked the sections on President Tubbo and his… partner? Or whoever that was. Oh! And Dream, of course - and not just because of the same name thing.”
“...Dream?”
“Yeah. A lot of the stuff about him is pretty ambiguous and not totally explained, but I thought he was kind of alright.”
Tommy is fine. He is fine. He is absolutely fine. Nothing is going wrong. This is fine. Everyone is allowed an opinion. Nobody knows what Dream had put him through. Nobody else. Just shake it off, as Taylor Swift would say. “Really? You think that?”
“Yeah. Why, who do you prefer?”
“Wilbur,” Tommy says immediately, grateful for the change of pace. “Definitely Wilbur.”
Clay’s brow raises. “The guy who blew up his own country?”
“Dream blew up L’Manburg too,” Tommy points out, doing his best to soothe out the sour tone from his voice. He can’t get annoyed at a random guy, even if his brain is screaming at him to just realise, realise, realise. He brushes it off. “Potato, potahto, right?”
“I guess,” Clay smiles, shrugging. “We’ll have to agree to disagree, right?”
“Right,” Tommy nods, and that is that.
The two keep on walking, offering up the occasional comment when Tommy points something out as they pass by - they don’t stop, mainly because they don’t really have the time to right now, but Tommy always tries to let a little bit of older information free. He’s not a complete arsehole, and this guy seems genuinely interested, surprisingly enough.
They make it past old shops and buildings, old memories and recollections, until they’re heading up a pretty familiar set of stairs. Tommy can’t even begin to count the amount of times he’d run up these with Tubbo, or as he’d been chasing after Sam Nook, or even when he’d been calling out for Ranboo to ‘hurry up!’ because he’d forced him on a new adventure.
It’s been a long time since then, though, and this is almost nice. Almost.
“That’s his house,” Tommy says, gesturing to a rather run-down looking shack within a hill. It’s pretty shit, looking at it like this, but also doing well for itself, all things considered. Sure, it’s been sectioned off and kept largely away from the general public because of how horribly unstable it is, but still. Tommy likes it. He always will, that’ll never change. (Sue him, he has weird attachments, okay?) “Right there.”
“Wow,” Clay says, wide eyed and practically drooling. (He’s not, actually, but Tommy’s a liar. He’s just like that.) “It’s awesome.”
“Yep.” Tommy smirks, proud of himself even if he probably shouldn’t be. “Y’know, apparently the way it looks has changed more than ten times, maybe even more.”
“Woah. Really?”
“Really. It’s been made out of dirt, out of cobblestone, out of wood and granite and netherrack and—” Tommy laughs, forever pleased. “Well, you get the gist of it. It’s not stayed the same, that’s for sure.”
“That’s impressive,” Clay nods in quick agreement, “To be able to keep up with all of that. This Tommy guy must’ve been real ambitious.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he was just super, super bored.”
Clay hums, distracted for a moment or so as he reads over the helpful sign boards that have been set up next to the rope sectioning it off from people walking by - to admire not touch, and all that. He taps against the letters before pulling back. “Do you think that we can go in? Have a look around?”
“In there?” Tommy’s brows arch upwards.
“Yeah. Nobody’s here, and it’s not that easy to spot us, so we might get away with it…”
“We can’t.”
Clay frowns. “How come?”
“Floor is unstable,” Tommy explains, and y’know what, that isn’t even false, for once. “There were a lot of underground railways and tunnels built underneath so it’s at a huge risk of collapse with how deteriorated time has made it. I just wouldn’t risk it, if I were you.”
“We could yolo it?”
Tommy snorts. “Absolutely not. I don’t have a death wish, thanks. Nor do I want to get stuck in a dark, horrible hole with you.” He also doesn’t only live ‘once’, so.
“I don’t have a death wish either!” Clay groans petulantly, “I just think it would be neat to see what kind of conditions this guy lived in. It must have been pretty rough with all of the constant wars and fighting and stuff.”
“It was alright,” Tommy shrugs a little defensively, and then immediately frowns. He really needs to get a grip - he isn’t usually this connected with his past. “I mean— that’s what they say, at least. I’m pretty sure he was doing alright for himself at the end.”
“Really? Then why did he just drop off of the face of the Earth one day?” Clay asks, “Do you know about that?”
Oh.
Oh.
Tommy freezes. He freezes, lets a cool chill curl around his scarred skin, lets his heart beat, beat, beat against his delicate rib cage. That wasn’t what he had been expecting, that wasn’t what he had been expecting at all. “Huh?” He asks, dumbly, as if his brain has suddenly stopped functioning. Maybe it has.
“Well, y’know,” Clay looks around, and then settles his gaze back on the home, the broken, bruised home full of ghosts and memories. “Some people say that he never really died in L’Manburg, or wherever it was. They say he went crazy and just left one day, and apparently people try to cover it up to save face because he was just a kid.”
“That’s stupid.”
‘That’s stupid’, Tommy says, even though parts of it are heartbreakingly right. He knows what people say, he knows the kind of theories they make up and the conspiracies about everyone’s whereabouts after the majority of the country had fallen and crumbled into the unforgiving ground. He knows.
People speculate. People get things wrong. People sometimes get things right.
“I guess,” Clay easily agrees, even if he doesn’t sound particularly convinced by what Tommy is saying. “I mean, it must’ve been pretty hard for him, right? Watching his brother die, being exiled by his friend, growing up as a child soldier, having to live knowing that it was his fault that everyone—”
His house suddenly doesn’t feel as comforting as Tommy had been hoping for. He needs to get away, he needs to get away before all of this swallows him whole.
“Hey.” Tommy interrupts, and his voice is as hard as steel even as his mind is breaking apart. Seeing his old house is one thing, hearing these comments, these reminders and these criticisms, is definitely another. Tommy has a sensitive soul these days, he just can’t help it. “Didn’t you want to go to the prison?”
“Oh,” Clay blinks. “Yeah, sorry, have we been here for too long?”
“Just a bit,” Tommy nods, like the awful liar he is. Or maybe he’s not awful. “Don’t wanna miss out on the best part, right?”
“Gotcha,” Clay grins, even as his gaze seems permanently fixated on Tommy’s home, his land and his garden. He seems almost mesmerised by it, and if Tommy had even a tiny bit more rationality, he would have noticed the almost crazed look within his eyes - the madness and the bubbling hysteria threatening to overflow.
He misses that, though, of course he does, and Tommy instead continues to walk along with Clay, talking about whatever comes to mind.
Whatever comes to mind, like discussing how the large foundations for the hotel are somehow still standing; like mentioning how the prime path looks particularly neat up around these parts; like talking about how everything seems to get a lot eerier and colder the closer they get to the mass walls made up of a daunting obsidian.
The prison still stands tall, surprisingly enough. It’s grand and it’s large, a true box of horrors and a land of hell - Pandora's Vault, the place that only the worst were dutifully kept, with the worst back then being an insane psychopath, an anarchy-obsessed prick, a guy with serious memory issues and somebody who weirdly resembled a blue hedgehog.
It still looks to be in its prime, even now.
For a moment, Tommy feels as if he’s back, hundreds of years ago, and stepping up to head into the prison - ready to face Dream a final time and then be able to move on with his life. He feels as if he’s young and bright and ready to get over his fears of a man with a mask and a green hoodie stained red.
Tommy suspects that it’s because it’s made out of obsidian and other carefully refined blocks - iron bars and bubbling pools of a heated lava that make it almost impossible to break into. Unless they’re willing to lose an arm and a leg to the heat and the agony, nobody really wants to try to take apart that piece of history.
Tommy can’t exactly blame them, though. Even now, even now he’s outside and it’s been years and he’s technically safe and free, even now he can’t really bring himself to stare at the building for too long. It’s painful. It hurts, makes him want to duck under his covers and hide away from the outside world. He doesn’t want to be seen, doesn’t want to relive any haunting memories.
(The nightmares that stay and refuse to leave are enough. Tommy can accept the terror within his sleep, he doesn’t think he’d be able to handle it if it was happening in his reality, too.)
“What do you think?” He asks, as they get ever closer towards it. “Impressive?”
“Absolutely,” Clay immediately agrees. He looks mesmerised again - maybe even more so than before. Or maybe not, it’s hard to tell when your mind is spinning. “It’s… I mean, it’s huge.”
“Yeah. Sam was a pretty brilliant builder, wasn’t he?”
“Sam? Is that the guy who did this?”
“Yup. He was— people say that he was commissioned by Dream to build the whole thing. I’m pretty sure that it took months for it all to be done,” Tommy explains, doing his best to piece things together, some of it from his own mind and some of it actually from textbooks. “Worth a lot, though.”
“I can imagine.” Clay smiles, “I’m surprised that no billionaire has tried to snatch it up already and turn it into, like, a theme park.”
“They can’t. It’s under some sort of historical protection. It’s probably never going to be taken down.”
“Really?” Clay blinks and Tommy finds himself shrugging along as the other speaks. “What about the lava levels inside of there? Are they not going to rise or something? Should we not be more worried?”
“I mean— you can worry, but it isn’t going to get you very far. There are protocols intact and people checking on it every so often. Plus, I don’t think them rising is actually possible whatsoever.” Tommy shrugs. “Whatever’s in there is not coming out any time soon.”
It’s something basic that Tommy knows, something that he can explain pretty easily and distract himself from the very thing that they’re discussing, at least in a sense. He gets to talk about facts and even if those facts are about the prison, they’re still just facts at the end of the day - something that Tommy can happily deal with.
(He’s not really a people person. Not anymore, at least.)
“Huh,” Clay says as he looks upward. “I guess that’s for the best, right? I’d hate to see all of the ruins here destroyed again because this had like… exploded.”
Tommy snorts. “Yeah. If everything was destroyed I’d be out of a job, too, so.”
“Oh that’s true! Well— I guess Snowchester might be safe. You could set up camp there.”
“And freeze my balls off everyday?” Tommy arches a brow. “No thanks. I’ll pass.”
“Fair enough. I heard Snowchester wasn’t for everyone anyway,” Clay laughs as he looks at one of the signs. It says something about the prison, about how complex it was and how it took them a long, long time to finally make a crack within the walls to get inside. He glances at Tommy. “Can we go in there? Is that allowed?”
Tommy blinks, glances to the sign and then back at Clay. This guy has a serious obsession. It’s getting weird. Can’t he just accept the outside of places as they are? “Seriously?”
“Yeah! I’m just wondering, y’know, it—”
“Wow. You really do have a death wish. You want to go inside of that.” Even now, even hundreds of years later it still makes Tommy’s skin crawl uncomfortably. It still makes him want to scream and cry and throw a tantrum over just how deplorable it all is.
“I just think it would be interesting. I like history.”
“You like putting yourself in weird, dangerous situations, apparently,” Tommy rolls his eyes. “But no, to answer your question. Nobody goes in there, not even like— scientists or whatever. Everything is done externally. But, honestly, nobody really wants to.”
“Because it's dangerous?”
“Because it’s dangerous. And scary. And genuinely the worst place on the fucking planet.”
“I think it’s cool,” Clay frowns.
“You also think Dream is cool so, you’re a bit of a freak, man.” Tommy sighs. He’s pretty sick of this, now, sick of the memories being brought back up, sick of having to deal with all of this all over again when he’s been trying to move on. (Trying to remove on, like he’s still not clinging to these broken lands with desperate, bloody fingers.) “Let’s just go.”
“No. I don’t want to go.”
“We have to,” Tommy frowns, rubbing at his arms. It’s cold. It’s dark. He wants to fuck off now. Right now. This guy is being a bit of a prick. “It’s getting late.”
“No, Tommy.” Clay says slowly, and they’re sort of in front of the prison, now. Tommy can hear the hum of looming nether portals, feel the sting of obsidian as it lashes out against his skin, hear the screams and the cries and the pleading for somebody to just make it all stop. “Let’s have a little chat, shall we?”
Everything is getting colder, everything is getting colder and it hurts and this isn’t normal. This isn’t normal at all. Tommy knows, deep down, he knows. This is what his brain had been warning him about. He should have seen the signs, he should have known that true evil never dies - that it never disappears, certainly not forever.
Tommy lets out a disbelieving laugh, takes a step back. “You’re acting weird,” he says, “Really weird. What the fuck?”
“Let’s talk about,” Clay hums, taps his finger on his chin and his green, green, green eyes spark with a nauseating delight. Everything is suddenly changing. Everything is changing and Tommy can’t stop it and what is happening and why and— “Oh! I know! Let’s talk about how it felt when I killed you.”
Tommy’s world stops spinning. His oxygen is pulled right from his lungs and his heartbeat, beat, beats against his delicate rib cage - it wants to escape, and he does too. He wants to go home. “What?” He says, quiet, unsure and uncertain and still wanting to run away, so far away. Is this a joke? “What are you talking about?”
“Let’s talk about when you were trapped inside of the prison with me, when—” he laughs, “When you cried and you sobbed and you begged for Sam to come and get you, to help you out and he just, oh, he just didn’t respond. Or how about when you’d sit, right in that little corner and you’d mumble over and over and over again for— ’Techno, Techno I’m sorry, I’m sorry please, please come and get me, please—’.”
Tommy’s hands are shaking. His mind is spinning and his throat tightens, it tightens up and up and up and he can’t breathe. He really can’t breathe. He doesn’t know what’s happening or what’s going on but he really can’t breathe.
“I don’t—”
“God, what I’d give to crush your little skull all over again. To have you finally stop yapping about this and that and this and that and thinking that you’re better than everyone else!” Clay— Clay, no, it’s not, it’s not— “To get the Tommy Innit to fall from grace!”
Tommy’s shaking his head, he’s shaking his head and it hurts and he’s going to throw up. He can’t do this. He can’t do any of this. When had everything gone so awfully wrong?
“I just couldn’t stop, you know? I couldn’t stop hitting you. It just— you made me so angry. Everything you said and everything you did— I hated you. I hated you and so I killed you. I killed you, Tommy! And then I brought you back! And then I fucking brought you back, isn’t that great?”
”Dream?”
“Ding, ding, ding!” Dream laughs, he laughs and he laughs and he laughs. It’s hysterical and it’s crazed and it’s so, so familiar that Tommy wonders how he hadn’t realised, how he hadn’t immediately known. Has it really been that long that he’d just forget? Just forget about the very person who had ruined him so severely? “We have a winner, everyone, well done! You figured it out! Took you long enough, huh? I was really getting sick of playing nice.”
For all of the time that Tommy had talked with Clay, it hadn’t been him. For all of the time that they had laughed and joked and talked about their lives, it had all been fake. It had been Dream, Dream, Dream and Tommy just hadn’t realised. He hadn’t realised at all. Ignorant, ignorant!
“I don’t understand,” Tommy croaks. There’s the taste of salt on his lips. Is he crying? Maybe. He thinks that he is. “You died— you died— you left—”
“Just like you did?” Dream grins.
“You did this to me,” Tommy says at a whisper, and he places a hand over his chest as if that will somehow help in— in anything at all. “You did this to me, you fucking bastard! You did this to me!” You killed me and brought me back and that forced my life into a never-ending loop. His voice rises and rises and rises.
“I told you, Tommy! I told you that we’d be immortals together! And look— here we are! After so long of being apart,” Dream exclaims, holding his arms out. “We’ve made it back to square one! Just like it always should have been!”
“I was happy! I was happy here! I've moved on!”
“Moved on? Moved on? Really? You’re still here Tommy! You’re still playing with ghosts and hanging onto the dead! You’ve not moved anywhere!”
Tommy shakes his head, pulls his quivering, scarred hands through his hair, ripping and pulling and tugging. He’s hyperventilating, choking on air and peals of vomit that threaten to claw up and out of his mouth. Dream doesn’t care. Dream will never care.
“Even after you left them,” Dream laughs again and again and again, shaking his head and his eyes crinkle at the sides out of pure mirth, “Even after you left them all when you realised your little… predicament… would make things complicated, you still cling to their ghosts as if that will make them ever forgive you.”
Tommy stops, stares, his breath catching within his throat. His gaze flits over Dream’s face and— and he’s not lying, he’s not lying but— “They were fine.”
Tommy had realised quite early on that his forced immortality would always be a problem. He had realised that he wasn’t strong enough to watch everyone grow up and then die as he stayed exactly the same as before. He wouldn’t be able to do it, it wouldn’t be— it wouldn’t work for him. And so he had decided, one day, when everything was calm and quiet and quite normal, all things considered, that he would leave.
Of course he hadn’t just up and disappeared. He had left notes, made sure that everyone he knew and cherished were happy, truly happy. There was no conflict, hadn’t been any in years and— and everyone was doing well. Dream had supposedly vanished, at least that’s what Sapnap had said, and Tommy trusted the fiery man, so. It was alright for him to… go.
It was all alright. Everyone should have lived happy lives.
So what—
“They were fine, sure,” Dream shrugs, and there’s that look again, that haunting, violent look within his green eyes, “Until I came back and picked them off one by one, of course.”
Tommy’s eyes widen. His hands shake and his mind spins and spins and spins. That can’t be true. That can’t be true, that can’t be true! “No,” he whispers. “No.”
“Yes, Tommy. Yes. You left and I decided to take the opportunity granted to me - served on a silver platter.” Dream laughs, shrugs his shoulders as if this is the most casual thing in the world. He looks gleeful. Happy. “Did you know that Tubbo didn’t cry, right before I swung an axe through his skull?”
Tommy is going to die. He’s going to die.
“There were no tears, even as Ranboo choked on his own blood beside him and his son—” Dream snorts, “He didn’t cry, didn’t beg or plead for his life, he just said— ’I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Tommy,’ isn’t that fun? Isn’t that sweet?”
Tommy shakes his head. “The books don’t say that happened—”
“Of course they don’t! You think I’d let that happen? Karl, scribbling and scribbling and scribbling in his silly little books about how everyone had lived happy and content lives after the war before I slaughtered him, too! But no, they died peacefully and happily and so did you, Tommy! So did you, didn’t you?”
“You’re sick! You’re a sick bastard! You— you’ve orchestrated everything! You shouldn’t even be alive!” Tommy screams.
“But I am! I am alive! I’ve been pulling the strings for years and years, Tommy! Why would I stop? Why would I stop now!?”
Tommy drags his hands over his face, taking another step back as he sobs and weeps and cries for people that could have been. Everyone was meant to be happy. Everyone was meant to be happy and safe. “I loved them—”
“I know you did,” Dream hums in agreement, “I know you loved them. That’s why I had to do it. You need to understand.”
“You didn’t need to kill them.”
“There was no other way.”
Tommy shakes his head, still trying to swallow back hiccups and sobs and that nauseating guilt threatening to swallow him whole. If he had just stayed… if he had stayed with everyone even despite his long, long lifespan, could he have saved them? Could he have done something more? Or would this have always happened?
Would they always have died hundreds of years ago, all of them in pain and crying out for a reprieve that would never come? Would Tommy always have continued to live his life by broken remains turned into a popular tourist destination - his existence meaningless and bland? Would Dream always have shown up at some point, after watching and waiting for so long?
Or would it have been different? Tommy will never know.
“There’s always another way,” he whispers, “They didn’t need to die.” And then he looks up, confused, unsure and so, so angry. “Why wait this long? Why did you come now? Pretend to— to be somebody else?”
Dream tilts his head, juts his lower lip out in a mocking pout. “All of this is a game, Tommy. I don’t need to play by any standard rules.”
“You could have some fucking compassion!” Even as Tommy says that, letting the words slip from his trembling, bitten lips, he knows that— that it isn’t really true. Dream isn’t the type to have compassion, he’s hollowed out and cruel, filled only with hatred and burning anger - an eldritch horror creeping out from underneath the floorboards.
Dream is a monster. He is a monster and he does not care for any sort of empathy or understanding. He wants and he takes and he gets, and then that is that.
He has waited for Tommy to grow, to spend years and years inside of an isolation that he cannot break free from. He has watched, from the sidelines, as Tommy lives on the lies of a family business and uncles and fathers and cousins that look just like him so that he can stay, by his old, broken home with the bloodied ghosts of friends that had once been.
He has waited and now he is here, and Tommy has nobody else.
This is his last connection to the past.
This is all he has and he is breaking underneath the realisation of it.
(He doesn’t want this, he doesn’t want this, he doesn’t want this at all but this is the first out in years that he’s had and Tommy doesn’t know what to do, he’s panicking and he’s sick and he really thinks that his mind is bleeding out from his ears.)
“Come with me, Tommy,” Dream says, slow and steady, calm and cool and his lips - oh, they’ve stretched out into a kind smile, one that bleeds into his cheeks and reminds Tommy of the days he’d first stepped foot onto land that wasn’t yet his. He knows. He knows. He knows what to do and what to say, he always does. “Come with me, Tommy. I can look after you now.”
“I hate you,” is what Tommy says. He does. He really, really does.
“I know,” Dream’s smile only widens, and he holds out a hand. It’s an offering and a demand all at once. Tommy knows, and so does Dream. There is nobody else for them now. Nobody but each other, in the most twisted of sickening ways.
It is not normal and it is not good and Tommy’s heart aches to be held in a brunette’s strong arms as he sings quiet lullabies; aches to be swaddled within a thick, red cloak watching as a warrior feeds his dogs; aches to be amongst friends and family and people that had once ruffled his hair and helped him strive within a cruel, cruel world.
This is not the end that Tommyinnit had wanted.
And yet he glances up, and his future stares right back at him.
Tommy squares his shoulders, and he takes Dream’s hand.
And then that is that.